For Those Walking The Cliff's Edge {How To Balance In a Broken World}

Photo Credit: by Ophelia photos via Compfight cc
 
I don't have all the answers. In fact lately I've felt more full of questions than anything. An accident two weeks ago and news that broke over my heart like a crashing wave just a few days ago have left me heavy hearted.

I only know one thing and it is that I want to have the answers.

These words, as of late, have stuck in my throat just under the surface. I admit that there are times when I wonder if God is asleep at the wheel. I own that I have leveled my questions at God as vehemently as Job ever did and with less cause.

Because how do you live fully alive amidst the sorrow of death and a broken world? How do you believe in fullest life when it is slipping away for those around you?

  "Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God." ~ Tim Keller

I have that feeling like when you speak up in a quiet room and all eyes turn on you. The eyes are expectant and waiting on me to answer with words that calm and mend the tear. I stumble through because I've never been terribly deft at saying the thing that is just right in the moment and sewing has never been my strong suit.

Time creeps and I listen to the Spirit's groan on my behalf and the words do come. They rise to the top and they aren't accusations against God, but rather they are an indictment on myself and my lack of faith and fearlessness as a child of God. From the end of ourselves we can see the beginning of God's hope and there are more than enough answers to fill eternity.

What do those in the valley need the most from those of us tenuously walking above them on the cliff's edge? Aren't we always just once false step away from the valley? The truth is yes, we are, and regardless of sounding trite I'll say it. Choose joy today because tomorrow is never promised.

Joy is a fountain of hope in a bone dry world. 

Your Bible study sister whose marriage is falling apart and all the best efforts for restoration have failed. The family with the diagnosis so unthinkable it leaves you gut punched in and feeling helpless.

They need you to live the joy today. Because if we don't live joy today then who is to believe us when we say that there is hope tomorrow? 

I don't mean that we feign happiness or put on brave faces and ignore reality.

Fires blaze, tempers flare and prodigals don't come home and there has to be a truth big enough to transcend the pit. Women go in for routine exams and come out cancer patients. Grandparents memories vaporize into thin air and we need a theology that is robust enough to carry the burden. A truth that ascends the mountain and shines light down to the valley, to the darkest places. 

Those trudging through the valley's depths need you to bring meals, cry with them, be angry with them,watch their kids, send texts, give until it hurts, be the Church, but the bigger picture being painted is that they need you to stop living small. 

If you believe a big Gospel then you can live a big life.

I was wide eyed and wrestled long into the night wondering what I could do to put pressure on some of the gushing wounds around me. I kept coming back to the same place- embrace life, hands open, palms up. This isn't a seize-the-day kind of philosophy it is a letting go of anything but God kind of living. It means holding the hand of God tighter and more intentionally than you ever dreamed.

That knot of fear you feel in your stomach is the way you know that something is worth doing. Love bigger. Fight for joy. A little bird told me that scared is the new brave. Which must mean if I'm shaking in my boots then courage abounds. Those in the pit need to know that joy still exists above them in the heavens.

Children die. The best among us fall to illness. My very own parents died. This world is broken off at it's root and the root that is God is beckoning us to find our life in Him. It is the only salvation in a world in desperate need of a rescue plan.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2:2-5

The most miraculous thing in all the world is that He stooped to save us. The most miraculous thing is that we weren't all consumed in an instant by a holy God. We are alive and though death is nipping at our heels and we ache as it crashes up against our weak frames we can claim life in Christ.

Those aren't trite platitudes in the face of real life suffering. That isn't a verse-a-day kind of Christian devotion. It is robust Gospel living that is just that a Gospel for the living, a Gospel that lives in the face of death.

That is permission to walk fearless. That is a green light to go to say "Yes!" to God and everything He has given. Even if the whole world breaks and falls our foundation is sure and certain. Might our last words be a battle cry that death never ever wins for those who are in Christ. And let every word from now until then be sure and certain that God is for us.  

Just a Little Bit More

I lean hard on the kitchen counter and I try to piece together my grocery list and do simple arithmetic to insure that the dollars in my pocket are enough. I go to the store and put things in the cart and pull things out and make a second list to go to the farmer's market and the discount store and I break a sweat and my stomach lurches with every beep of the scanner.

And I wonder...

I wonder...

Does anyone else feel this panic? 
Am I the only one trying to remember exactly how much is left in the account? 
Can I make these dollars and cents make more sense each month? 
Will there ever be more than enough? Enough to untie the knots in my gut?

The cashier tells the balance and there is just enough to cover the bill.

I've heard it said that when John D. Rockefeller was asked, "How much is enough?" he replied, "Just a little bit more."

Our culture piles and hoards and yet there never seems to be enough.

We fill paper sacks with the dusty cans from the back corners of our pantries and we cart them to soup kitchens to fill what is empty, but we find more often then not that we are the empty.

Hands full, but soul empty.

We hand over bags filled with fashion gone out of fad and we have no idea where it goes or what good it does or doesn't really do. 

A little more in the bank account, the closet, the stuff stuffed into the cracks of a cracked life, won't cover up our soul's need to be made whole. 

It is easy to wish away, pray away, hope away the want and the gap and our desperate need. We persist in thinking that "Just a little bit more" and we'll be free, but what if freedom isn't what God wants for us.

What if the scraping to get by is the very thing that keeps us on our knees?
What if all the things withheld are the very graces that we hold? 
What if the knots in our stomachs are an invitation to find our ends met in God when the ends don't seem to meet? 

Freedom from want and need is in finding, that in Christ, we have neither want nor need. 

Believe with every fiber that even when you dig for change in your purse, and the cushions and your kid's piggy bank and you only ever have just enough; God is for you.

He is the more when we barely have enough. 

Full Circle and Freedom {An Allume Recap}

A year ago at Allume I wore my flannel shirt too many days in a row, lost my voice, and read brave and voiceless in front of 100+ women this story. 

But it's not that story I want to share here today. The story I want to share began on that night in late October of 2012 when I squeaked out words on a page and stood barefoot and bare souled before a bunch of women I hardly knew beyond avatars on a screen. 

This story has been written and scrawled desperately for a year until a day in late October at the same conference a year later God brought it all full circle.

There is so much to tell...

I could tell you about the hugs from friends gathered near from thousands of miles away. I could tell  you about the prayers and tears and real life conversations with women who cheer me on across the miles. I could tell you about my computer dying in front of 100+ women and the "throw it on the ground" moment I had. I could gush about my few days of up to earlies and up way too lates with a couple of my best real life girlfriends who I get to see far too in often.

I really could fill a book with the story that is the Allume community, but I won't.

Instead I will tell you that sometimes you go somewhere thinking that God can do a little bit and then He shows up big. I don't mean sorta big, I mean grand slam kind of big.

A year ago I was a girl who was in fist to fist combat with fear. I had taken it on for the year and I was determined that in 31 Days in the month of October I would explain it away. I would write fear into oblivion and it would never bother me again. Then that didn't happen and the fear battle rages on so I pinned it for another year to the top of the bulletin board of life.

But the year came and almost went and October with the fire and beauty that is the season was suddenly here and so was Allume. I was still wrestling with fear. You see it was only a year ago that I got brave enough to call myself a writer. If you are a writer then you get why that can be a daunting task and title.

God has done so much in my writing this year. I've seen this space grow enormously and for some reason you folks keep coming back and reading and cheering and believing in a big God with me.

It has truly been an incredible year, but the fear was still there under it all leaving words pent up. In fact so pent up that my friend Alia scrawled a prayer in my prayer journal (Thanks The Seed Company!) to that affect somehow knowing through the Spirit that there were words behind a dam within me.

Her prayer combined with about a million other things at Allume were the catalyst for God to release that dam. It feels like a sonic shockwave has gone off in my heart and mind and the words are just there gushing out. All the ways that I was fearful have just leaked right out and you know what is left? 

A spirit of bravery that gets what fear is, an ugly, insidious cancer that keeps us from full Spirit brave living, and gets that anyone that ever did anything big for God had a deep and abiding knowledge of who He is and what He has done. 

Here I stand on that and I've got words to say. Get ready.

You know that little book that I've been working on for about a million years? The one that I keep promising and falling through on? The one that was going to be an e-Book? Yeah, it's meant to be so much more than that and I know it in my bones and have it on some authority that it could be a reality.

Me, the girl who couldn't call herself a writer a year ago, might just actually hold her writing in her hands someday.

The reason that I can come back from a blogging conference and tell this story of freedom from sin and fear is because of a giant God who sees and a conference that is way more than a blogging conference. 

Allume is a place for Christian women who blog to meet with each other and ultimately come face to face with Jesus. 

What other blogging conference would dare challenge us to stop striving for readership? To stop reaching and reaching for more and more influence and just let your influence be your reach? To reach across the street and around the world to make the Gospel hope given open handed to all the prize and not worldly accolades in a comment box?

It is astounding and shocking beauty. It is life in the light. Life lived basking in the Light that is Jesus. I'm walking in the light today, reeling and tired and overwhelmed by grace, but walking.

Thanks Allume organizers, sponsors and every woman who makes up this community.

Oh and to that anonymous person who bought my conference pass. Maybe you knew, maybe you had a God-sized nudge and knew exactly what you were doing when you chose to bless, but just in case you didn't let me tell you that God took your gift and made it much. Who knows, God might just use my words, my little words and your gift, as the catalyst to feed Jesus hope to thousands more.

Can we dream that big?

You are a part of this story. My story. The story Jesus has been writing for us all and the story that He is writing on my own life in all my fear struggling and hope grasping. Thanks be to God.

{There is so much more to share. I promise that it will come out in bits and pieces scattered throughout the next few months. Right now I am going to be putting words to page in a real way. Pray for that process? Thanks dear ones.}

Motherhood in Comparisonville

My sweet firstborn girl never once slept through the night during her first year of life. Not one.single.time. Trust me, I was there. I lost more than a few nights of sleep to a screaming newborn and I cried more than a few prayers into the winter midnight the year she was born.

In my head it was easy to believe that no other mama was struggling the way that I was. It was easy to sit in the nursing mama's room at church and think that the other mama's rocking away had it all together.

I'm over at Christen Price's place today sharing the rest of the story. Come visit me and read the whole story!

We Stand There By Grace

There are a million times in my short life that in hindsight I see what could've been, maybe even what should've been, but what wasn't. Some of us look back and we see what was and how God plucked our feet clean out of the mud and set us on a rock. Many of us have forgotten all of that.

Wherever we stand we stand there by grace.

I'm a passionate person and I've got strong opinions about nearly everything. I imagine that most of us do. We have an innate desire to be known and heard and I get that. There are things in our world that are going on that are so heartbreaking and horrific that they beg to be spoken out, shouted out against.

I worry though that some of us are shouting out without looking behind, or in, or better yet, up.

A quick scroll through facebook or twitter can often make my blood boil. As another blogger put it recently, "If you are not kind on the internet, you are not kind". I would take it a step further and say if you are not kind on the internet or to those who are different than you then you don't understand grace. Period. I'm beginning to think I barely understand the marvelousness of grace.

Take any hot button issue and put "I would never..." in front of it and you have a person who has forgotten how God, in Christ, plumbed the depths of sin to rescue. Maybe you have lived a grace covered life and have done it all "right" or have shaken your head at stories' about mamas who saw no other option and made a choice you deem as "selfish".

I have shaken my head along with you, but God also has brought me face to face with women, not unlike me, whose lives are my could've beens. Those women have humbled me down to the holy ground that is God's grace.  I don't claim to understand the mystery which is why my life is different than another person's life.

All I know is that God's grace poured out through Jesus' blood is the great equalizer. 

If I believe that He reached deep for that abortive mother or willing sex worker or pedophile or suicide bomber or...name your ugly sin, then I have to believe He reached that deep for me. I'm not different. Given the right circumstance, the right configuration of my life, you could find me there in those dark places, desperate, alone and horribly lost.

Our's is a try hard, do good, show your trophies kind of world where we leave little room for those we deem undeserving. Christians are just as susceptible to this thinking and we often use the internet to flash our trophies of moral superiority.  It would do us great good to see ourselves as the undeserving. I desperately need to see myself as undeserving.

I believe facebook would grow a bit silent with such thinking.

Grace is the biggest kind of brave and maybe the marginalized could come out into the light if we would be courageous enough to see that we haven't earned one bit of our life. Grace erases the margins until all that is there are people who need, desperately, Jesus who rescues us all from the same depth.

We need to speak loudly in our world about the way sin has broken us and keeps shattering people and places over and over again. Planes fall from skies, waves break banks and flood homes, children are stolen and disappear, girls are enslaved to brothels where they are used and thrown away used and thrown away, families' starve, there is not enough and this world is sick and bleeding out and the grace drenched need to speak truth and love over the wounds, but we can't do it from a place of self-righteousness.

We can only speak from a place of Christ-righteousness. 

No trophies of our own held high, only Christ dead, buried, and gloriously, victoriously alive and searching for all who are lost. Even me. Even you. He dares to save us all.

What "More" Might Just Look Like...

I wrote the other day about how I'm dreaming and envisioning what "more" looks like. I'm not sure, for me, that it looks like a conference- even if it is a shiny new and amazing looking conference.

Because what I want, what you want, what we really want is more of God.  

 Maybe "more" looks something like this, 

I'm (me + the husband and wee girl) living (read as extended housesitting for a couple) in a double wide trailer (cue my husband singing "This here's the queen of my double wide trailer.") right now.

It is a true blessing. A blessing that allows us to be in full-time ministry without a few bills on our plate. I'm grateful, but there are days when it feels like the walls are closing in on me and that opening my temporary home's doors is something that shouldn't be done for the sake of everyone involved.

I've spent most of my adult life waiting to arrive at some kind of plateau or semi-final destination. Somewhere that I could plant my feet, get my bearings, and start making a rooted life. The truth is that all this time all the rough edged puzzle pieces have been making my life and God has been re-making me.

This red tin roof that hangs over my head and the normal non-trailer sized door with the less than perfect DIY wreath on the door- it is my life, my one God given life. My life is anything but pinterest perfect and it is my imperfect door that I can choose to shut the world out with or open up and invite anyone who might stumble in.

It would be easier to keep it closed. I've kept it closed because of my own fear of rejection.

I bet you've done the same.

My gut feeling is that you have too. Maybe it is because you heard that other woman at church, you know the one, the one with the perfect nails, perfect hair, perfect kids who sleep perfectly through the night. {FYI: She's not perfect- just good at covering up the cracks.}

I believe that the "more" I am aching for isn't going to be found in nuanced rhetoric with the greatest minds on earth. My "more" won't be found in my perfectly decorated no-seams-showing home. No the more I'm looking for is going to be found inside these four walls while sitting across from sisters who just let all the ugly cracks show.

It will be found in community, in community with other women who just straight out plain and simple confess insecurity, tell the truth about their ordinary and link arms side by side to walk forward brave.

We need a space, a holy bench of nodding and knowing, that will level the playing field of motherhood and sisterhood. I want to roll out that bench, open up the door and invite you in. Since I can't invite you in to much more than this space I'm going to turn my gaze on the women around me.

I'm kicking my front door open and I'm gonna yell up and down the street to all the women I know. They are welcome to come on in once a week and put their feet up and let their hair down.

I'm going to make this tiny trailer a place where we can all go. 

I'm not redecorating. I might not even clean up the crumbs on the floor and the dust bunnies in the corners. Some nights might be store bought cake and a less than fresh pot of coffee, but I'm welcoming anyone who will come into my imperfect.

I'm realizing in the sisterhood of the velveteen hearted worn and real we just want a place to be and belong and sister that is more than most of us get in our day to day.

Jesus gave us each other to be grace for each other. 

My hard is your grace. I get to live the hard stuff and you get to see me and see the grace of God. You get to live the hard stuff and I get to see you being real and say, "Thank Jesus that He holds us!"

Maybe, just maybe, "more" is nailing a sign to our door proclaiming "Come as you are." Because God has been redeeming us with those words through His Son, the Word, since the day we fell and bruised ourselves terminally.

In the words of Philip Yancey, 

"When I write about what I believe and how I should live, it sounds neat and orderly. When I try to live it out, all hell breaks loose." 

I think this might be one of those hell-breaking-loose and running a-muck times. 
I'm willing to test that theory.

When You Want More But It Scares You

I have a degree in Women's Studies. I've been to a handful of Christian women's conferences. I've held a lot of birthing mama's hands on both sides of the Atlantic. I've brain-stormed and worked in sticky African heat to help women rise from the ashes of war and poverty. I'm a girl mama. I've learned from women young and old what it means to internalize the Gospel and live it out.

I believe in the beauty, power, and uncontainable tenacity of women. 

I've been craving more. 

More for myself and more for us all. All of us who have met Jesus at the well and are intent on drinking from His water of life from now until eternity.

There is a stir that is happening in this generation of women. I feel it down deep in my bones. We are weary of tidy looking women's ministry and exhausting and exhausted debates on gender.

We see past sterile cookie cutter neat and clean church life to a world that is broken busted and bleeding out. We are the broken, busted and bleeding out and we we want to be the ones to push the pressure, to hold the surrender flag out to one another and to the world to say, "...But Jesus..."

I read about the idea last week and it spoke right to my core.

Women. Gathering. Jesus.

I was excited and then...well, then...I wasn't.

You see what is happening isn't safe. The goal isn't to have a bunch of women that look a certain way and ascribe to certain rules of spiritual law. Nope, it is to gather women from across the Christian spectrum to think, storytell, dream, relate and actively hope in Christ.

That all sounds a bit utopian if you ask me.

I don't go around shouting my opinions (which are many) on this blog because I truly desire to live in grace and let this blog be an extension of that journey. A blog can be a powerful mouthpiece and I don't trust myself to have the grace and self-control to use it with restraint. Don't get me wrong, I don't fault anyone who does use their blog to exposit their thoughts on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness- truth is that I admire you because all to often my rabid fear of conflict keeps me from speaking up. 

Over the course of the past few years I've started really listening to other women and their journeys and going again and again to Scripture to iron out of it's pages what Jesus had to say about us, the female gender, the Daughter's of Eve.

The one thing I know for sure is that we have value to God. 

He had a purpose in making us women and that purpose was not simply so we could clean house, cook supper, birth babies and show a little leg. We are part of His redemptive story and every mundane thing that we do to love those who live with us, down the street from us and on the other side of the world matters.

I want to be a part of a group of women that gets that truth and embodies that calling- even if it gets messy along the way. Because it will get messy along the way. We are more alike than different and it is that alike-ness that is the very likeness of God, His very image etched into every curve of womanly beauty.

Even though I am not sure about what I think about this movement, this rushing wave not of feminism, but of God-sized redemptive hope, I'm still going to join it.

Maybe you should too.

My Solo (in)RL

{In which I tell you about (in)RL using my own story}

Three weeks ago we moved to a new town.

I wrote last week about my longing for friendship. I cracked the door so that you could see that I hate all of this new kid stuff and just want friends that are old, worn in and comfortable.

The move really messed up my plans for (in)RL. I had thought about how much I would love to gather a big bunch of ladies into my home for mugs of goodness and cat-head sized cupcakes and chocolate...lots of chocolate. Instead the move found me in a small mountain town {read as not an (in)RL meetup for a couple of hours} with not a familiar soul in sight.

{In my defense I invited one lady, but despite my best efforts no dice...}

I'm not complaining about the move. I'm more than blessed and happy to have made this long awaited move, but after more than my fair share of moves the newness of being new has gotten, well...a bit old. So when the (in)RL weekend rolled around I realized I'd be flying solo it was not exactly what I had envisioned.

But just like everything God is always ahead of the curve...working in my own heart...

I wept through the opening video full of faces that I adore and hearts that I adore even more.

{Oh, and I got to be the "Pass the chocolate poster" so that pretty much made the whole event for me. Thanks to whoever made that fortuitous choice.}

The theme was about the challenges of staying in community. That has been a huge challenge logistically for me- explains my current predicament. {sigh}

{a bit of context for my (in)RL insights}

Last week the wee girl and I ventured out to our first round of toddler time at the local library. I viewed it as potential to make a few connections with other women in the local community. I psyched myself up with the reminder that the women I was about to meet are just like me even if on the surface we look different- Mamas trying to survive and needing to know they aren't alone in the fight.

I saw it on a few of their faces. They needed someone to see them.

I left the group with a couple of new acquaintances and an overall sense that there might really be some potential connections. This was a big step for me.

You see I'm not shy, but all the new girl stuff gives me icky feelings right in the pit of my stomach and can bring all of my ugly insecurities bubbling to the surface. I'm somewhat of an introvert- actually I'm a hybrid introvert and extrovert- an ambivert if you will. It's a thing, trust me.

I've always been really aware of my need for community with other women, but in the past I have sat back and waited for community to come to me. I pursued only when pursued. I realized something last week and (in)RL only fanned the flames of this epiphany.

In Christ I can pursue community without fear. I can look at the women that walk across my path and I can run right up to them and put my arm around them and say, "How are you doing?" and not worry about my own insecurity.

I loved what my friend Anna said in the (in)couragers video (Anna, forgive the paraphrase will ya?). She said that being an (in)courager has made her more brave in relationships. She's the one calling on the phone and pursuing community with other women when in the past she didn't do that.

Me either girl, me either! 

I realized that my role as an (in)courager {In which I get to virtually wrap my arms around a big group of new mamas and encourage them big} has opened my eyes and heart in a new way to other women.

The amazing Lisa-Jo in a video with lovely Ann said something {again really bad paraphrasing from poorly taken notes} that because of Christ we don't have to feel like we owe one another anything in community. I loved this thought. I felt so encouraged by the idea that I can open my arms up wide to every sister I meet not because I have so much to give them, but because Christ has given me so much.

But the staying stuff...that is the hard stuff, right?

Stacey Thacker, blogger and (in)courager extraordinaire, talked about a friend she had as a young mom and what she said when Stacey's family moved away. She said that it is much harder to be the one staying. As someone who recently moved I couldn't help thinking of the women in the church we just left.

They are doing the hard work of staying.

Yeah, I'm here in my new town and unfamiliar surroundings. The temptation is to feel self-pity when really I have been given an opportunity. I'm here blazing a trail of new relationships, but they are there still trudging through the nitty gritty of daily life with one another and it isn't always pretty. 

Oh no, it is not always pretty. It is not always mugs of goodness and cat-head sized cupcakes.

It reminded me of years ago when I was a part of a ministry that really centered on community I found myself knee deep in the mud of real community and it was hard. It showed me a lot of my sin and uncovered some things that weren't so pretty about my heart. Staying in community with other believers might just expose some ugly places and it might just hurt.

I'm left with a question.

Do I want to build that here? Do I want to step out of my front door and into someone else's life when it may very well get ugly. Do I want to chant inwardly as I walk toward another woman that we are all the same- souls in need of the Light of Christ, broken women in need of the community that only Christ can bring.

The answer that (in)RL inspired, the answer that the heart of the Gospel requires is, "YES!"

Next year I hope my living room is full of beautifully broken women. I hope that this year is an Ebenezer stone on the road to that day. I believe wholeheartedly that it is.

When the Mom Voices Tell You You're Doing It Wrong

My shelves are heavy with books, a book on the basics of midwifery, a book covering the ins and outs of vaccines, a handbook on labor progress, a few dozen infant care books and what looks like an encyclopedia of all things breastfeeding. {I am a doula after all!}

My resource library is a contradiction in itself. I've covered my bases with books on co-sleeping and books on cry-it-out. I decided long ago that I would know a bit about everything and that from there I would make an informed decision. Sometimes I feel too informed. Can you relate?

Could it be that we suffer from too much information? 

Could it be that the weight of all the information is breaking our backs and tearing at our mama hearts?

Sister, the sum of motherhood is not found in doing things the right way.  It is found in the fact that we fail at every turn, but Jesus...but Jesus. 

Jesus, rich in mercy, slow to anger, abounding in grace ties up all the loose ends and the just-can't-do-it-alls.

I am self-proclaimed as a semi-crunchy mama. That means my daughter wears an amber necklace, I coach women through pregnancy and birth, I spend hours of my day huddled around crockpots brewing yogurt or dehydrators making fruit leather and I clean with massive amounts of white vinegar.

Don't shut me down sister. I'm talking to you and me. We're all in this together. Grace abounds.

If you buy conventionally grown produce and love your Mr. Clean Magic Eraser you won't find me beating you down. My favorite parenting philosophy is grace.

You love your family just as much as I do. I believe this with all my heart.

Breast, bottle, freezer cooking, meal planning, cleaning schedules, natural birth, medicated birth, c-section, co-sleeping, cry-it-out, baby wearing, stroller pushing, cloth diaper, work at home, stay at home, full time job, t.v., no t.v., organic, home school, private school, public school, spanking, no spanking, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny,...blah,blah,blah. None of this adds up to a good mom and sometimes it can lead to a downright worn out mama. All these things that make life can drain it right out of us and leave us empty and longing to do it all right.

We've built some ivory towers mamas and we love to pontificate to one another from their heights. We blog about the best way to do "X" and we spout our opinions on Facebook and twitter.

I've done it myself. Guilty. 

I have a motto, "You can't know everything about everything."

We can give out advice and we can see all the less than perfect in everyone else, but I'll be the first to say that sometimes all this stuff that we're trying to accomplish as mamas can just leave us worn out and feeling like there is only more and more to know, to do, to be, to clean, to try, to fix in this broken world.

Who you are, in Christ, is enough. 

Not who you are on your Pinterest boards...No, who you are in CHRIST is enough. 

If you need to order takeout tonight because you're exhausted and if that takeout is a pizza from the less than healthy place down the street...well, do it and know that grace abounds and you are still loved.

There are a million blogs and books to tell you the right way to do this or that. A million ways and there are literally billions of mamas finding our own ways in this world.  Turn the voices down and turn Jesus up and sister, you will find your way. You will find His way and His way is always grace and more love then we can understand.

The healthiest thing for our families is for mama to stop listening to the voices that don't matter and listen to the ones that do. Our children. Our husbands. Most of all, our Jesus.

5 ways that you can turn down the mom voices in your head {and other mama's heads}

1. If you get into a discussion about a controversial topic on Facebook or Twitter tell the person you are sharing with that you can share your thoughts in a private/direct message. I did this recently on the topic of vaccines- a hot topic to say the least- in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with others that might read the post. Because not everyone needs to hear my opinion on everything.
2. Pray about the way you come across in conversation- both online and in real life. Are you accepting of other ways of doing things? Do you show grace for different perspectives? Ask God to grow you in gentleness. Not as easy as it might sound.
3. Make a point of taking the Sabbath as a day to rest. Rest from your mama "to do" list as much as possible. This always helps me see that my family survives even when I don't do everything I think I should be doing. 
4. Turn up some good music, take a deep breath and dance it out {Pretty much my answer to all of life's problems}- might I suggest Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey? You can thank me later for this smooth, soulful tune. 
5. Stay in the Word. {The Summer session of HelloMornings will help keep you accountable and in the Word.} No blog post or parenting book can answer the heart of our questions. When I'm not in the Word I always feel like I am lacking. The voices of others can easily drown out God's voice when I am not listening to His heart.

His Faithfulness Precedes Him

I’m standing on this side of things hoped for, but yet unseen.  We’ve moved in and out of thecountry and across town more times than I can count over the course of our seven year marriage and we’re about to pick up roots one more time and move to a new town and a new calling. 

I don’t have the slightest doubt that this is what we are supposed to do. We’re leaning hard into Him for the big stuff, the God-sized stuff. 

I’m beginning to think it is all God-sized stuff.

A year and a half ago we moved back from the coast of West Africa. My belly was bulging with a wee one on the way, my husband had no job and we had nowhere to live. I remember that summer wrestling with anxiety over where we would sleep, where this little one would sleep, where we would call home.   

In the end my husband found a job in a new city and started it the week after Labor Day that year. We found a rental house that was affordable and more than we needed. All the big stuff was covered. God showed up in a big way for us. 

Still I had anxiety about life in general. I knew no one except some family that lived in the same city, but an hour away. An hour isn’t exactly within “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?” distance.  We began to hunt for a church. In the past this has been a frustrating task so we braced for awkward worship experiences, meet and greets and the inevitable getting to know you stuff. 

I hate “icebreakers”. Can I get an “Amen!”? 

What we didn’t realize is that God had already gone before us. We found a church within a couple of weeks and one of the pastors turned out to be an old friend. Still as a woman, particularly an expectant mama, I longed for someone who already knew me to put their arm around me and let me know that they saw me and were praying for me. 

Assurance came wrapped as a gift. 

A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. Did you catch that? A friend who I had never met gave me a baby gift. We were visiting a church small group for the first time and she had heard that I was pregnant. I now know this friend to be a crafting ninja and one of the kindest, sweetest, most giving women I know, but at the time I was shocked and surprised that she had a beautifully wrapped handmade gift for me the first time we met. 

That gift was more than a gift. It was a hug straight from God. It was the evidence of things that I had not seen in the midst of anxiety and fear. It was evidence that God goes before us into every circumstance and makes a way for the big and the small. 

A few weeks ago I had an emergency doctor’s appointment and I sent out a text to a group of local friends looking for someone to watch my now wild girl. Women that I never imagined being a part of my life a year and a half ago responded in unison to meet this need. God arranged for them to meet my need long before the moment the need was felt. 

I am confident that He is doing the same for you friend. He doesn’t play favorites. 

For women who are grounded in one place and doing life together- make sure you look around at those coming into your circles. You might be an answer to prayer. You might be the radical kindness that a newbie is in need of to make them feel at home, to make them feel like they belong in a new place.

A year and a half later and God’s call is taking us to another set of “new” everything. New home, new community, new church, new ministry. I’m standing on this side of faith and I’m scared that I won’t make any friends in the new town. 

I’m afraid that I won’t have anyone to watch my daughter when I have a doctor’s appointment. 

I’m tempted toward anxiety over a million things outside of my direct control. Some of you are sharing my shoes. You have moved to a new town away from community and family, your husband is without a job, you are a new mama and you feel isolated and alone. There are a million different versions of my shared story. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and God promises that He is always on the other side of life’s question marks with more than enough answers to our heart cries. Some of those answers come with faces and handmade gifts. 

I have no idea what my new community will be like. It might be hard from beginning to end, but undoubtedly God is there. He goes before us. His faithfulness precedes Him and makes it safe to follow His lead. 

The Move and An Opportunity to Bless

I can't find which end is up right now. This big, brave move that we're about to make seems stuck in slow motion and buried in boxes in need of sorting. Friends, I'm going to be MIA for the next week. Partly because of all the moving business and partly because we're cutting our internet off in a couple of days. All of it is scary- including the internet-less situation.

This is the stuff that this blog is made of. The stuff that God is re-making my fearful heart out of. Fearlessness and faith all rolled into one ball of life and lived out for you to read on the screen.

Thanks for reading and right now if you wouldn't mind would you pray for me? Pray that I can love my family well and that all of this anxiousness would be turned to joy and praise for a God who revels in showing up big for us.In the meantime let me tell you about some amazing friends of ours who are doing some thing big and brave themselves.

The Clarks are a family of six (4 boys including a set of twins!) already and are going to folding into their family a beautiful little girl through the ministry of adoption. They are selling raffle tickets for a chance to win something amazing from Thirty One Gifts! I can't begin to share with you about this family. They work for Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters- a camp ministry that engages teens as well as men and women of all ages to live radical lives of faith for Christ (it is also where me and the husband met and married!)- where they teach students how to share the Gospel and grow in faith through the ministry of service.

It would really bless my socks off and encourage my heart if you would click over and enter the raffle with a $10 donation. This family loves Jesus and your small investment will place this little girl that God already ordained for their family in their home to be wrapped in His loving arms.

Who doesn't want to be a part of that?

Off to do some more packing, sigh...Thanks for every single tweet of encouragement and facebook message along the way!

What Community Has to Do With It

When I was in the second grade I became friends with a couple of girls who I thought were the coolest seven year old gals this side of the Mississippi. Turns out they were mean girls- really mean girls. I spent my second grade year trying to stay on their good side by excluding which ever little girl they chose from our circle. I didn't have a clue what the word "community" meant at that point, but I was learning more about it then I knew.

Many of us find ourselves as adults with the same understanding of community as my second grade self.  Some of us have been deeply wounded by communities that played the same games as my second grade friends. 

There are those of us walking around with covered up wounds from being a part of communities gone bust and bankrupt of love. Some of us don't even bother covering up the gaping holes anymore. We bare their marks and keep an arms distance with anyone, especially other Christians, who might get a bit too close.

Christ rose from the grave and two short days ago we celebrated that fact. That, one resoundingly, undeniable fact that He rose from a heavy tombed grave and is alive. Men and women through the ages have died proclaiming that one unshakeable truth. We stand on this side of heaven and walking this road of life in Christ is anything but easy.

Sometimes walking it with one another is downright messy and ugly, but Jesus dead, buried and raised has everything to do with community. 

We aren't meant to do it alone and a few weeks pass and all those who believed in Christ dead, buried, risen and coming again publicly proclaimed that this was the truth. They corporately proclaimed that He is the way, the truth, and the life.

They corporately proclaimed this fact.

 Acts 2:42-47 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

From the start of the Christian church there was value placed on community. Don't dilute yourself to think that community amidst the first church was anything other than difficult. If it wasn't then Paul wouldn't have written volumes to those first churches.

The first church didn't have clever tweets or facebook statuses to hide behind. They lived out their new faith side by side and it got ugly at times. When we choose to walk with one another through this life and beneath the weight of the cross it will get ugly at times.

The church, from it's inception, has struggled to emulate Christ's love. Women have struggled to live in community with one another. Yes, historically within the Church women have had cat fights.

A community built around Gospel truth isn't about how we dress, our method of parenting (or lack there of), how healthy our lifestyle, what music tickles our ears or how deep our pocketbooks go. We don't have to compare notes and decide to ourselves who is the most worthy among us. Nope, all those cards are off the table in Christ. In Christ the playing field is level and we are community of the broken made whole in Christ raised. 

We will continue to struggle till Kingdom come and there is no perfect community. Community, true Christ loving bold and broken community, starts within our own hearts and our own actions.   Sisters (and brothers too), let's be the Body. Christ's body was broken for us and our hearts will be broken at some point by our fleshly, human brothers and sisters.

In Christ there is all kinds of healing for all kinds of broken...even our broken communities. 
We are a part of a whole new community in Him.

Real community is right where you are. An opportunity to find that community is coming up in just a few weeks. Join an (in)RL meet-up in your area!

What Brave Looks Like

My husband walked into his office yesterday and turned in his notice. Two short weeks from now he will no longer be employed in a "secure" job. A couple of weeks from now our medical insurance will stop and the bills will keep going. No, he doesn't have a better job offer that he has accepted. At least not a job offer that the world would call better. Yes, we know that the economy isn't good. Yes, we know that we have a child and that to the world this is an irresponsible and foolish move. We're aware of the upside down approach to life we're taking. We've counted the cost and well... 

We just think that God is bigger.

I would be lying if I didn't feel a bit of a lurch in my stomach over the whole grand adventure. This year of fearless is putting my will to the test in enormous ways. How badly do I want to live fearlessly? How badly do I want God-shaped bravery to consume my life? We're talking big, God-sized stuff, but again, isn't all of this life God-sized stuff if we're honest? Isn't the reason that we can walk into each moment with confidence because God is there in each moment and has been since before time?

This is a dream that we've been holding close for a few years now. The realization of a dream that was birthed in West Africa and has been growing through hard days and the even harder soil of our hearts here on the East Coast of the U.S. of A. We let go of the American dream the last time we quit jobs and packed five bulging suitcases for Liberian shores. We traded the idea of white picket fences and apple pie for zinc-roofed shanties and rice with greens and that trade changed us to our soul's core. It shouldn't have surprised us that the idea of coming home and settling into business as usual was not as easy as it had once been, not even possible. The vestiges of the American dream were decorating the corners of our hearts like macrame and wood paneling. It just had to go. What has replaced it is a desire to do life differently, to live life on the edges of faith, hope and love and to trust Him with every ounce of it. 

I'm guilty of wanting God's will to come wrapped in a tidy little box. A box with set parameters and crisp dimensions makes me feel safe and secure about the future, a future that I think I have some (imaginary) semblance of control over, but reality is that I want to dream big dreams. I want to dream God-sized dreams. Dreams that are so big that they will fail unless God shows up big. This dream, we've held close and dared to keep dreaming when it seemed impossible, is becoming a reality and God is going to have to show up big for it to work.

I know that someone is reading this and wondering how we can walk into the uncertain with any hope that we won't be broke and land ourselves in the poor house in six months. All I can say is that God promises and He NEVER goes back on a promise. God doesn't forsake His children and those counted righteous by His Son will never be found begging for bread. Some of you are shaking your heads and saying, "I'd never be able to step out with such faith." This move, this radical stepping out in faith, has nothing to do with us. Folks, we reached the end of our rope a long time ago. The rope was frayed and broken and we decided that God's rope even if it doesn't look long enough or strong enough at times is the better choice. We reached the end of our reaching for security and even though we don't know what the future holds we aren't looking back. We're only straining forward toward the cross and toward a God who glories to show up in gigantic ways for the sake of His great name.

We've been taught to think that brave is when you do something hard or risky and reap a reward for yourself or someone else. I don't know if our reward for this bit of faith bravery will be seen on this side of heaven. I don't know if we'll ever have anything to "show" for this life lived trusting desperately in a God who does not fail. We're just a little family with a God-sized dream. A little family that has decided that the American dream is far too small for us. Brave often looks like blind faith, even foolish, and today it looks like my husband quitting his job because He believes in a great big Gospel and a great big God.

We only look brave because we're trusting a God who is too big to fail.

Visit our family blog for more information on where we're going, what we're doing and how you can be a part of making "things hoped for" a reality for the ministry ahead. 

A Brave New Neighborhood

I grew up on the same road that four generations had lived and breathed out their lives on. A row of houses squeezed in between sprawling fields of cotton, tobacco and soybeans. I ran barefoot across my yard and climbed the squatted cherry trees and never worried for a second about the neighbors because most of them were family or forever friends. The older folks on the street would invite me in for lemonade and an oatmeal creme pie on hot Carolina afternoons and I wouldn't think twice about slipping myself behind their worn wooden kitchen tables for a snack. Loving my neighbors meant just being known and my neighbors all looked the same. Southern. White. Church-folk.

I moved away as soon as my car was fueled up and the ink on my high school diploma was dry.  I journeyed out of state for college and never found my way back to Quarry road. I've now lived all over the Old North State and overseas on African shores. I discovered that when Jesus said to "Love your neighbor as yourself" He wasn't necessarily talking about the person next door. He meant everyone, everywhere, every second. But often for us it really is our own neighbors that need love, that need Christ. Regardless, they are often the folks that we avoid in our culture that trains us to view privacy as our sacred cow.

Very few of us still live on the same road with our same family ties that we were bound to as children. We're a generation of gypsies and often we land in neighborhoods with no one around that we know. Our neighborhoods look vastly different from the ones that we grew up in thirty plus years ago. Even in the South we don't often live side by side with people that look and sound like us anymore. From our church seats we're instructed to be missionaries and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, but for some of us the ends of the earth have come to us in our subdivisions and we've labeled our neighbors as "different".

We live toe to toe with Afghanis, Burmese, Liberians, Somalians, Laotians, and every flavor of Latin culture. Every tribe and tongue are on our front doorsteps, but we often shut the door to keep their noisy music and the smelly unidentifiable aromas out. The aroma of the Gospel is the same in every culture and the language of grace can be spoken by anyone who has ears to hear.  You will probably never visit Nepal, but what if Nepal came to you and lived right down the street with children the same age as your own? The nations are just on the other side of our front door, but most of us are guilty of shutting the door and double locking it. Some of us are itching to move. We are itching for our neighbors to move. We would rather talk about how much they bring down the property value of our home than talk to them face to face about where they come from and dare to find out how we are the same.

It isn't just ethnicity that creates a barrier. As a Southerner I am privy to the use of the term "trailer trash" or "white trash". I've used it in conversation. I won't lie about that fact. It is a term that encompasses a lot of folks and in conversation a raised eyebrow and the repeating of that phrase creates a universal definition with a common understanding. Like the Jeffersons some folks born on the poorer side of the tracks are some times able to move on up to nicer neighborhoods. Some of them live next door to you and you're contemplating moving because of that fact.

Might I ask you to think twice before you put your home on the market? 

You worry about your kids safety. I get that. It's legitimate and I'm not proposing we all move to areas with known meth houses. You are just plain annoyed with your neighbor's disrespect and disregard for common civility. I get that. Their destructive dog has torn up your yard one to many times. Our world is topsy turvy and bad things happen and they often happen to us at home. What I am proposing is that we let our guard down a bit and we lower our holier than thou standards to see those around us not as a label, but as a needy soul in desperate want of grace.

Last summer at the beach I had a discussion with one of my nieces after I said something I really shouldn't have about an encounter with some people who were different from us. What I said was not edifying and certainly didn't represent a heart changed by the Gospel and ready to extend that to others. I realized as I was saying thoughtless words that I was being ungracious to say the least and started back pedaling and trying to undo the damage to my sweet niece's thinking that I probably incurred, but this missionary mama realized really quick that no matter how long we lived in West Africa it doesn't change my hearts hard bent toward self-righteousness.

I don't engage those next door because the fear that takes up residence in my heart stops me. It isn't the resident down the street that repels me from loving. It is the fear residing in my own bones that stops me short of extending grace and truth to the people cooking dinner, washing cars, nursing babes, planting flowers, raising kids, riding bikes, and watching sports right down the street.  People that might be more like us than we ever imagined if we'd get brave enough to knock on their doors and peak behind the curtains. 

The mission field has come to us in our neighborhoods. My family is about to move to a new town, a new set of neighbors and it would be easy to stay inside with the shutters drawn. If I am honest that is the easy route. The method of neighboring that is most comfortable to me; you live your life, I'll live mine. We'll get along just fine. The Gospel calls us to more. More grace. More tolerance for the unkempt lawn. More boldness in sharing Christ. More love when the neighbor's kid shoots our cat with his pellet gun. More compassion for all that goes on behind closed doors that we may never know about. If we leave these neighborhoods who will bare the "more" to hurting hearts in need of the sweet balm of the Gospel?

Friends, the fields are ripe for the harvest. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to labor. Many of us would rather pack up the farm and move away. Don't. Ask for Jesus' eyes to see those around you. It might just change the whole world. It might just change you. At the very least it will change your perspective.